Our fullbacks

[Reece]

If you get the impression I'm having a dig its because I'm increasingly pissed of with crap like riise, voronin, kuyt and momo being given pitch time.

Fair enough mate. I'd read a couple of your posts this morning and they seemed pretty negative that is all, but hey thats your prerogative

[rage]

monday morning blues add toit i suppose

[Reece]

Can't argue with that

[keniget]

Riise wasn't that bad. The Riise bias on this site is absolutely ridiculous. He generally looked for a short pass out of defence yesterday and has done for the past few games. He certainly doesn't hoof it as much as Carra and Sami.

The main criticism you can level against him regarding yesterdays game was that he got into a number of great attacking positions and wasted them all with **** balls.

What does he offer?

- He's a decent defender.
- He's versatile.
- He has great stamina and is up and down for 90mins (Finnan rarely overlaps as Riise does).
- He is capable of playing great crosses / balls into the box as we've seen a number of times.
- He is a goal threat. Not many fullbacks are.

[badpiggy]

having only been able to listen to the match on the radio yesterday, a couple of things did seem very obvious:

1. our possession seemed to constantly come to an end with riise. and kuyt a lot of the time.
2. while he was on, it sounded like everything for us was going through xabi.
3. general impression was that we seemed to be happy enough to concede possession to arsenal and try to hit them on the break - sounded like we had a couple of very good moves and chances to score again.
4. "lawro" is a ****wit.

[Guest]

Where are all the other regulars ? This forum is pretty quiet today ?

[Harv]

Riise wasn't that bad. The Riise bias on this site is absolutely ridiculous. He generally looked for a short pass out of defence yesterday and has done for the past few games. He certainly doesn't hoof it as much as Carra and Sami.

The main criticism you can level against him regarding yesterdays game was that he got into a number of great attacking positions and wasted them all with **** balls.

What does he offer?

- He's a decent defender. decent being the key word
- He's versatile. true
- He has great stamina and is up and down for 90mins (Finnan rarely overlaps as Riise does). He does get forward, but wastes possession and takes rediculous long range shots
- He is capable of playing great crosses / balls into the box as we've seen a number of times. Everybody is capable of playing a decent ball every once and a while...he should be putting in a quality ball 70% of the time
-He is a goal threat. Not many fullbacks are. Hardly, how many goals has he got from a fullback position. He only scores when he is played as a left mid

[keniget]

You make it sound as though 90% of the time he gets forward he either wastes it by taking a crazy long shot or delivering a **** ball in. That is simply not true. There is this perception that every time Riise gets the ball EVERYTHING goes to ****. Again, simply not true.

Can we do better? Sure, you always can, but there is a good 5/6 players I'd get rid of before Riise.

[Imy]

what a poor poor excuse for a footballer Riise is

Seriously apart from a superb goal every 30 games or so what exactly does he offer us.

I'll tell you, sweet. ****. all!

He cant pass to save himself, he cant run with the ball, he cant cross, all he can do is hold possession, turn around and play it of his opponent for a throw in. He is not good enough!

In Rafa's system we need 2 fullbacks like Arsenal have, they bomb forward, they overlap, creating space, and they have pace.

Having Riise, and to a lesser extent Finnan will not win us the league. They are both too slow at moving the ball. While Finnan is sound as a pound defensively, and can put a decent ball in....its far to infrequent for my liking, he is far to defense minded.

If only we had of got Dani Alves when we had the chance

I'd agree with that, he's a throwback to GH's era of non ball playing footballers, basically just an athlete

Finnan has been a rock but age is catching up, why does he not whip in crosses instead of trying to always pinpoint them (usually dropping to the opposing centre back) is one of the things that frustrates me about him, he is not getting any faster and playing Kuyt/Crow in front of him does him no favours.

[Imy]

You make it sound as though 90% of the time he gets forward he either wastes it by taking a crazy long shot or delivering a **** ball in. That is simply not true. There is this perception that every time Riise gets the ball EVERYTHING goes to ****. Again, simply not true.

Can we do better? Sure, you always can, but there is a good 5/6 players I'd get rid of before Riise.

Sami
Riise
Momo

These three can't pass the ball to save their lives

Kuyt
Crow

Can't score in a brothel.

[keniget]

Err... right.

[Imy]

Err... right.

sorry i should have said these are the players I would ship out ASAP

[Rich]

Thought Riise had a poor game... although he wasn't the worst Liverpool player on the pitch, that dubious honour rests with Kuyt.

As for Riise's qualities, have we mentioned his Long Throws yet?

[Armchairkopite]

why is it a dig? we've cried out for width and pace since rafa arrived and every transfer window we've spent the money elsewhere.
Luxury players are the final ingrediant

I think Lucas is an amazing prospect but did we really need to have 5 central midfielders in our first team squad.
Yes, we played with three in the middle yesterday and how many of the 5 players can play like Lucas? Only one thats Xabi

As for a centre back, its obvious we're short there BUT imo we're short elsewhere on the pitch too. From what I've seen of Rafa he'll spend the money on centre back cover before even considering width, pace and flair.

If you get the impression I'm having a dig its because I'm increasingly pissed of with crap like riise, voronin, kuyt and momo being given pitch time.

Injuries aren't helping

[Armchairkopite]

Thought Riise had a poor game... although he wasn't the worst Liverpool player on the pitch, that dubious honour rests with Kuyt.

Kuyt played well given his wide role he held the ball up well at times, Voronin was total crap

As for Riise's qualities, have we mentioned his Long Throws yet?